Re: Joseph Addison the essayist

Dear Tim, Thanks very much for your reply.I have just returned from 5 weeks leave to find it.

I saw your previous notice about Robert Addisons and have been meaning to check through my paperwork about that, but somehow can never find enough time.But I will get back to you about it one day soon.

I spent some of my recent holiday digging in libraries in Sydney, and found what I think is a wonderful footnote about the Westmorland Addisons in an old book.I attach it here, and I hope you will be as excited by it as I was.

Regards, Toni.

We cannot think ourselves quite at liberty to close our account of this parish [Torpenhow], without first noticing a traditionary report, (which many well-informed persons of the family believed and affirmed to be well-founded) that the family of the ADDISONS, a name immortalized by the celebrated secretary, originally came from Low-Wood Nook, in this parish.How, when, or on what occasion, the progenitors of Dean Addison went to Mauld's Meburn, in Westmorland, it is not in our power to state:but we remember to have seen sundry letters that passed between Joseph Addison, Esq. afterwards secretary, and the Rev. Anthony Addison, of Queen's college, and Rector of Abingdon, who constantly subscribed himself his cousin;and who, undoubtedly, was of that branch of the family that settled at Whitehaven.These letters, in which there are frequent allusions to this circumstance of their being all of one family, were, many of them, preserved by some of the family in Maryland;where, many years ago, we saw them in the possession of that excellent man and excellent scholar, the Rev. Henry Addison.The fact moreover is somewhat confirmed by the intimacy and connection which always subsisted between both the Westmorland and Cumberland Addisons and Sir Joseph Williamson;to whom the dean, in an uncommonly neat and handsome strain of panegyric, dedicates both his Account of West Barbary and The Present State of the Jews.

It was either on the removal of one of them into Westmorland, or soon after, that the small estate at Low-Wood Nook was disposed of, when two brothers went of to settle, one in Maryland, and the other in Whitehaven;together with a sister, who married a Mr. Bowles, and settled, on the same plan, in London.Their propose was to prosecute a grand scheme of trade, on the coast of Africa, and in Maryland and Virginia:and this they carried on with great credit and success for many years.The Whitehaven branch is now all extinct:what remained of their property having ultimately centred in the present Mrs. Wallace, of Carleton-Hall, who, by the mother's side, is descended from the Addisons;by whose husband, the late attorney general, it was all sold.

That branch which went into Maryland, soon became of note;and still are so.One of them was of the council, and upper house of Assembly.They possess a noble estate on the banks of the Potomac, opposite to Alexandria;and contiguous to the new faederal city, now building there, on a large scale.The family has long been distinguished for their strong sense, fine taste and humour, and exquisite stile in writing.The Rev. Henry Addison above named, who, with two of his brothers, was educated at Lowther, under the tuition of Mr. Wilkinson, one of the first scholars in his age, was allowed to excel all his contemporaries at Queen's in the writing of good Latin:and his English stile was hardly inferior.Taking the side of government, in the late confusions which overturned the constitution of his country, he had the fortitude, at an advanced period of life, nobly to turn his back on it, with the indignant sentiment of the editor of Scipio - "Ingrata terra!ne ossa quidem habeas:"and returned to this kingdom, with a friend and relation, who now feels a melancholy satisfaction in thus paying a last faithful, though feeble, tribute of affection to a man of great worth, whose memory he will every honour:

" His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani " Munere ... "

The History of the County of Cumberland, Volume II by William Hutchinson

This edition originally printed by F. Jollie, Carlisle, 1794-1797 Republished 1974 by EP Publishing Limited in collaboration with Cumberland County Library.